Liberating Ecumenism: an ecclesiological dialogue with the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox participation in the World Council of Churches

McGeoch, Graham Gerald (2015) Liberating Ecumenism: an ecclesiological dialogue with the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox participation in the World Council of Churches. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The thesis attempts to address Orthodox Church concerns about the Protestant nature and ethos of the ecumenical movement, as it is encountered in the World Council of Churches, by examining Orthodox theological contributions to ecclesiology. This preliminary work is undertaken, as a first step, to establish points of dialogue with the theology of liberation and wider critical theories, in the search for a liberating ecumenism. At the same time, and in a second step (to follow the epistemology of the theology of liberation), this Orthodox theology is placed in a critical dialogue with the theology of liberation in the search for liberating ecclesiological perspectives that can contribute to the movement in ecumenism. This uneasy dialogue helps to recover absent epistemologies from ongoing ecumenical dialogues by re-reading orthodoxies, both ecumenical and ecclesiological, from a liberationist paradigm, and sets ecclesiology within the wider framework of contributions from critical theory.

This dialogue between Orthodox theology and the theology of liberation helps to construct an ecclesiology that liberates ecumenism by setting ecclesiology and the ecumenical movement in the wider context of social movements. This thesis calls the ecumenical movement to ‘another possible world’ influenced by people-centred ecclesiologies, which transgresses the canonical boundaries in the ecumenical movement. To be ecumenical implies an Orthodox content to ecclesiology, otherwise the ecumenical movement is open to charges of pan-Protestantism. It is by embracing Orthodoxy that the ecumenical movement can move beyond hegemonic colonial projects and find a liberating praxis.
This thesis proposes a dialogue that reflects the structure of the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches. However, it engages with Orthodox ecclesiology and ecumenical histories from the perspective of the theology of liberation in the search for a liberating ecumenism and proposes a praxis that develops movement in the ecumenical and the ecclesiological through developing an ecclesiology from different peripheries of the Church.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: liberation theology, ecumenism, ecclesiology, Orthodox theology, World Council of Churches, mística, Special Commission.
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BL Religion; B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity; B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BT Doctrinal Theology; B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BV Practical Theology; B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BX Christian Denominations; H Social Sciences > HM Sociology; J Political Science > JC Political theory; J Political Science > JZ International relations
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > Theology and Religious Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Gay, Dr. Douglas
• Date of Award: 2015
• Depositing User: Graham Gerald McGeoch
• Unique ID: glathesis:2015-6466
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 17 Jun 2015 10:37
• Last Modified: 02 May 2018 12:24
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6466